One Third of Shah Deniz Stage 1 Gas Reserves Extracted

About one third of Shah Deniz Stage 1 (SD1) gas reserves, composed of the shallowest layers of the field has been extracted.

Khoshbakht Yusifzaheh the Vice-President of Azerbaijan’s state oil and gas company (SOCAR) announced that some 60 billion cubic meters (bcm) of the natural gas has been extracted from SD1 since 2006.

Yusifzadeh said during his speech at the International Caspian Energy Forum Conference that some 15 million tons of the gas condensate has been produced from SD1 as well.

SD1 was commenced in 2006 and according to BP - the operator of this field- as well as the Azerbaijan's own statistics some 58.9 bcm of gas has been produced untill March 1, 2015 from this phase.

The pressure of gas in SD1’s layers are still very high, with producing 1.5 to bcm per annum (bcm/a) from each well.

It was projected that some 178 bcm of natural gas be extracted from SD1, then according to BP and SOCAR’s vice president’s announced figures, one third of the reserves of SD1 has been extracted.

Currently, Azerbaijan produces 29 million cubic meters per day from SD1’s layers at the depth of approximately 6800 meters.

Currently Shah Deniz consortium is developing the Shad Deniz Stage 2 (SD2) layers at the depth of 7100 meters.

It’s expected that some 400 bcm of natural gas be extracted from SD2 in 25 years. Azerbaijan projected to export 6 bcm/a and 10 bcm/d of gas to Turkey and Europe in 2019-2020 respectively.

Azerbaijan also says that the development of third phase of  Shah Deniz gas field would start in 2020.

Yusifzadeh said that some 32 bcm of produced gas from SD1 was exported to Turkey and 4.5 bcm to Georgia since 2006. Therefore, 22.5 bcm of the produced gas – or 38.2 percent- from this phase was consumed domestically.

Some $8.5 billion has been invested in SD1. 

The reserves of Shah Deniz field is about 1.2 trillion cubic meters.

 Ilham Shaban is Director of the Azerbaijan Centre for Oil Studies, in Baku.